Posted
by
timothyon Thursday January 05, 2012 @03:01PM
from the but-it's-got-three-dee! dept.

A Wired article (as carried by CNN) attempts to answer the question of why 3D television hasn't caught on. The reasons listed there (high price, paltry content, the need for 3D glasses for typical sets, headaches and strain) all seem to be on the money, in themselves, but I think don't go far enough. 3D on a set small enough for home use outside a high-end home-theater rig seems to me like a clever novelty that I can't even enjoy unless I've given it my full attention. It's nothing like the jump from black-and-white to color, or even the jump from my old (circa 1993) 19" Trinitron to a flat-panel display. On the big screen, it's another story — there, 3D can be arresting and involving, even when it's exaggerated (and it is). On home sets, even quite large ones, to my eye 3D usually looks phony and out of place. Never mind that the content is limited and often expensive, or that there are competing standards for expensive glasses to wear — I just don't like that the commitment is greater than that required for casual, conventional TV; I can't readily scan email, skim through a magazine, or keep watching out the corner of my eye from another room. (I'm hoping to find some actually watchable no-glasses 3D sets at CES next week, but I'm skeptical.)

I have been thinking this was the main issue. How will an expensive 3D TV set improve most of my TV watching? It won't really enhance news, informational, sitcom kinds of shows. Some dramas and movies, perhaps. Sports and action-type programming, sure.

I think most people shrug at 3DTV because, who needs it?

Especially as expensive as it currently is, and since most cable operators are probably going to charge extra for it (and most are already paying extra for HD capability). This isn't a boom time, economically speaking, to be asking people to upgrade all their equipment.

I don't think most people see the benefits as being worth the expense.

I saw Avatar in 3D and literally didn't see anything useful in using that medium over regular 2D. I would assume they pulled out most of the stops on something that big to make 3D work.

Perhaps when it evolves into something that is 'actually' 3D and not 'simulated' 3D they will have something, but until then it is not and never has been '3D'. You can't change your perspective to look at an object from a different direction like you can in actual 3D life.

Actually,sports is the worst programming for 3D. For previous technology advances, sports was obviously better. Sports looked great in color, and sports looked great in Hi-Def and that helped those technologies gain acceptance. Not so for sports in 3D. 3D works best when the "director" can carefully control the strength of the 3d effect, and keep it consistent throughout, as is done in (well-made) movies, and in video games, where everything can be calculated in advance. I watched one of the first (US) football games broadcast to theaters in 3D. It was a painful experience.

While watching 3D, you can gradually get accustomed to the infra-ocular distance used to film the scene, which may differ from your view of the natural world. When adjacent scenes use different camera configurations, your mind takes time to make the adjustment to the new 3D perspective. This is one of the contributors to the headache effect.

In sports, the action is unpredictable, and may move towards or away from the camera(s) unexpectedly. Cuts from one view to another are frequent. This causes the viewer to continually readjust to new 3d perspectives. IMHO, this problem is the unavoidable Achilles heel of 3d sports. Remember, this is technology-independent. It doesn't matter what kind of glasses are being used, or whether no glasses are used -- this problem still exists.

3D tv is just a scam. tried every 20-30 years and they just don't learn...

No, AFAIK this is the third time they've tried it with movies ('50s, early '80s, present day), but only the first they've tried it seriously with television.

(Not counting sporadic special events and gimmick fests that require special glasses and have limitations, but work with an ordinary TV, and hence would not be much use for getting people to buy a new one!)

Coincidentally, I just overhead my boss this afternoon telling a customer that he doesn't have much use for the expensive 3D television he bought last year, and even admitting that it was a "gimmick". No big surprise, he was never even into TV that much in the first place, but likes his boys toys until he gets bored of them... which is pretty much as soon as he gets them:-).

Sorry to break it to you, but 3D was THE dominant form of visual home entertainment from the 1860s until about 1915. The Holmes stereoscope was found in almost every middle-class household, and the production of stereo cards was big business. Visit the Library of Congr

3D tv is just a scam. tried every 20-30 years and they just don't learn...

Are we to understand you did not see the extravaganza, which was Avatar?

The current means of performing 3D is far and above previous technology and produced a rich viewing experience - granted this is largely due to director and technical crew having a clear idea of what they were about. Being able to view a movie at home with such results would be wonderful, but there are two main pitfalls...

Technology of the displays at an available price-point to consumers - the big screens I've seen so far aren't as go

No, you are not supposed to replace all of your equipment and deal with those stupid glasses over one movie. What your supposed to do is replace your TV when you would be replacing it anyway, and when you look at two TVs that fit your need, you decide that you will take the one with 3D just in case you ever want to use that feature.

I just bought a brand new LG LED tv and it was NOT 3d "ready" I intentionally looked for a NON 3d set as I have zero desire for 3d on a tiny 52" tv.It's a brand new model as well, all makers still have a large number of no 3d models available.

Last year, I got a little Nintendo 3DS and hated it. Got headaches. Gave it to my daughter who says she's not bothered by it. Didn't really love 3D movies or the one experience I had with a 3D television at a friend's house.

But in November, I was at a card game at another friend's house and he had just gotten a big-screen 3D TV and we sat down to watch the movie Drive Angry. It was just spectacular. The movie was basic grindhouse fare, done pretty well and certainly with gusto. But the 3D was terrific. It didn't try to make anything subtle about it, just blasted the 3D into your face with every dumb 3D trick that's been around since the 50's. And it all worked. The well-designed and manufactured 3D glasses fit nicely over my regular glasses.4 No headache.

Now understand, it's still way too expensive. If I went out and bought a big 3D TV and 4 sets of glasses at the current prices, my wife would cut my throat in my sleep and I couldn't blame her. I don't know how that 3D technology would look on content that didn't already have an unreal feel about it. Maybe there's something that's so cheesy about the 3D that it would look stupid on a film that wasn't already cheesy, I'm not sure.

I doubt very much that the current 3D technology will last more than a few more years before it's passe again, just like the way it's gone every time the entertainment industry has tried 3D in the past. I'm sure that better 3D technology will supplant it before long, probably within the next couple of years.

...and just think how fun it will be when it is actually 3D, instead of the lame, one-angle, limited stereo-vision it is now!

(Yes, I realize the majority have been "marketed" into thinking stereo-vision is actually really 3D. But that doesn't mean they won't notice when real 3D displays replace this lame 2D hack. The first time they stand up and the POV changes so they can look down the cheerleader's cleavage will be the very last time they ever even *think* about purchasing a 2D set.)

It is not catching on because makers haven't figure it out yet. Here is the deal. Most people that watch tv donâ(TM)t' want a interactive experience. They don't want to strap on crappy do-dads or watch complex things where they have to pick and choose a path or answer questions.

People sit down in front of a tv to be mindlessly entertained. Something a standard 2d tv does just fine.

You want a interactive video experience play your Xbox. Want to be educated, read a book.

That's great but things like the 3ds don't work for some of us. Especially those of us who have various forms of occipital lobe damage from head injuries. And chronic migraine sufferers don't seem to have much luck with this stuff either.

Really the manufacturers need to be shamed into putting the 50 cents worth of components back into glasses to allow them to be used for one-eye viewing when the rest of the people in the room are watching 3D. That they stopped making glasses with this feature is crap. Sony recently produced a set that could do this (because SimulView does the same thing) and then took pains to disable the SimulView feature on them when they are being used on different brand sets. Someone needs to get the ADA/AAPD on the

Most of the 3d shit needs glasses of some sort. And alot of people already wear glasses. Doesn't work. Plus you have to have enough of them for everyone who wants to view 3dtv.

We JUST got done upgrading to hdtv, digital and flatscreens all over the freakin country. And most of us feel that was stupid anyway. But it was all we could buy when our old tvs finally died.

And we found out all our tvs don't work with the cable/sat systems directly and we need another stupid little box sitting there. So we all spent all this money on what is pretty much a damm monitor. And paid a premium to do it.

3d all seems to come down to 'ooo look! object comming right at you!' It's not natural. They use it instead of a good story. And not in addition to.

I like 3D for some stuff. Crowd scenes and other chaotic stuff can look great on it. Big cars exploding out of the screen is just trashy, though. There's some beautiful underwater documentary I saw - swarms of hammerheads swimming past in 3D is very very cool.

The thing is, people know that the price will drop, the glasses will become lighter (and probably incompatible with old 3D TVs), and the new ones won't give you headaches. There's only a few good 3D movies every year, and you can see them in cinemas.

When I was young, my parents only had a black and white set (because they were tight, and hated TV). I used to think color TV looked crap. Suddenly, there were color clashes everywhere. But I got used to it after a while.

Just because you don't know anyone, doesn't mean it's not hugely popular outside your social circle. Skype or Facetime is great for relatives, families with kids, etc, who travel a lot or are spread out around the world and don't get to see each other in person more than once a year or so. It has definitely caught on now.

Same with HD. Not even considering television or movie content, between the Xbox 360 and PS3 there are 40M+ game consoles in t

Consumers will flock to 3DTVs when there is basically nothing else on the market: otherwise, it just doesn't provide enough benefit to justify the added cost. This happened with HD too; did the TV makers really expect it to be different this time?

Consumers will flock to 3DTVs when there is basically nothing else on the market: otherwise, it just doesn't provide enough benefit to justify the added cost. This happened with HD too; did the TV makers really expect it to be different this time?

I think they might have. HD TVs sold in droves, for a while anyways, as people upgraded. They were a significant upgrade, and prices dropped while quality increased rapidly, causing a huge bubble for TV makers. It wasn't even that nothing else was available: HD TV's are simply far better than old CRT TVs, in nearly every possible way. 3D TVs are almost worse, in 3D mode, than regular HD TVs (although usually slightly better in non-3D mode), which means they simply will not sell. But based on the bubble, TV makers expected them to. Basically, they expected (or hoped, anyways) sales to continue at what they were, using 3D TVs to push that, not realizing they were in the middle of an upgrade bubble. Similar story with Blu-ray: DVDs were far (far far far) superior to VHS, so they sold well, whereas most people can't tell the difference between an upscaled DVD and a Blu-ray disc.

I don't think that's really it, though. From a simple "quality" point of view, there's no reason not to have a 3D TV - you can watch 2D with just as much quality and still have the option for an occasional 3D experience... it's choice, and it's win-win.

The problem for me is that finally going from SD to HD cost a lot of money. I had to upgrade the TV, I had to upgrade the disc player to BluRay, I had to upgrade the DVR, I had to upgrade the service I was getting.... now I'm supposed to upgrade all those devices to 3D? I don't think so... the cost isn't worth the benefit. I suppose if I was still at SD and decided to upgrade now, I'd go straight to 3D, but that's not the case for me nor the vast majority of people, IMO.

I expect when I spend that much money on a television that it last more than 2 or 3 years... more like 10 (at least) or more. Both televisions I replaced were over 12 years old. I need a REALLY compelling reason to upgrade, and there just isn't one.

What I meant was now that everyone, or nearly everyone, is at the HD TV level, the improvement of going to a 3D TV is extremely minor, whereas the improvement of going from SD to HD was huge (screen size, resolution, thinner screens, etc). As you said, if people were at the SD level 3D might see widespread adoption, precisely because 3D TVs are just slightly better HD TVs. But most people aren't using SD TVs anymore, and certainly not the people who might even consider getting a 3D TV. So while the quality

IMO it had more to do with the price dropping (a lot). I worked at retail a few years back (starting in 2006 when you could still find a few CRT TVs) that sold HD TVs: the price dropped rapidly. A 60" TV used to be multiple thousands of dollars. Now you can get one for a little over a thousand dollars. I actually think that is why SD models were dropped: because LCD prices came down. 10 years ago a 19" LCD monitor was a thousand dollars or so. Now it is under $100. SD TVs didn't cease to be made because TV makers forced people to upgrade: they stopped being made because no one was buying them anymore, because they could get so much better for not much more.

In many cases if you want to buy a quality home theater TV for 2D viewing you may have to buy a 3D TV. In this case I'm defining quality by the general performance aspects of image quality, color accuracy, black levels, etc. The bottom line is that in many cases manufacturers are simply holding back the better quality TVs for those that come with an (often unused) 3D feature. You can see this repeatedly in home theater review websites and forums like avsforum.com. This is not to say that all 3D TVs are

Consumers will flock to 3DTVs when there is basically nothing else on the market: otherwise, it just doesn't provide enough benefit to justify the added cost. This happened with HD too; did the TV makers really expect it to be different this time?

I agree that 3DTV uptake will basically be increasing only as people's current sets wear out and they buy new ones, I really don't see it being a driver of sales. That said, at least for the active-shutter type of 3D it really doesn't add any cost to include it in the TV - it is basically just a timing signal to tell the (over-priced) glasses when to switch.

That said, I don't think the manufacturers really expected it to push sales. They hoped it would help, and they didn't really have much else to advertise to try to attract new buyers (new! now 0.01 inches thinner than last year! Now including streaming app w in addition to x, y, and z!), so they have been talking it up as the big new feature. Tech/consumer electronics sites have been playing along, for pretty much the same reason - something to talk about and drive views. Not too much fun to only be able to say, "well, this year's models continue the trend of sacrificing picture quality for tiny and meaningless reductions in thickness as manufacturers abandon full-array LED backlighting in favor of more cost-effective edge lighting."

Consumers will do what they always did: Buy what they would have bought anyway.

There's, in my experience, just two kinds of consumers.

First, the "must have it, must show off" crowd. They will buy the latest and greatest gadget just to show that they're on the edge. They will buy any crap you pitch at them. Given that today money is tight with most people, or at least not as plentiful as it used to be, this crowd is rather small by now. Hence, you would sell to them... they're just not very numerous.

i recently bought a new 55" Samsung LED. I didn't see a lot of products at this size and price class that didn't have 3D capabilities.

So count me in with the 3D TV purchaser statistic.

Have I ever used it? Hell no. Would I have paid less for the same TV w/o 3D if it were available? Absolutely. So even as the 3D-TVs in the home percentage rises as manufacturers stuff it down our throats, the real indicator is who uses the feature? My guess is very few, but I'd love to see a survey on that little tidbit.

Pay a premium for a TV that requires special glasses, which as mine are prescription, means not settling for what's on the market, but waiting for someone to produce prescription lens 3D glasses for that particular model and paying an arm and a leg for them.

After waiting for those non-existent glasses to be developed, paying hundreds or thousands of dollars extra, what will I have?

A premium? It doesn't take much to add 3D to a modern (high refresh rate) panel, and these days 3D is a feature that comes for free on a lot of sets. Mine even came with 2 glasses. I expect that 3D will be an affordable, amusing option for anyone with a reasonably new TV; no need to go and buy a special TV set, just pick up the $25 glasses if you want 3D.

How nice for you. I wear glasses too and the 3D glasses sit over my prescription glasses and give me a massive headache. Every single type of 3D glasses I've ever tried since having to wear prescription lenses has caused me discomfort to varying degrees.

My girlfriend and I tried a couple of 3D TVs at Best Buy. They all appeared blurry and none had a 3D effect, so either the displays were set up wrong or they just plain suck. However, we did go to a 3D viewing of some movie (there was no 2D showing of it at the time) a while back and that impressed me. Not enough that I'd pay to have the 3D effect at home, but enough to pay a couple extra bucks for the odd movie in theaters.

I find that 3D on larger television sets (55" and up) does work. It is not as good as viewing the same movie in the cinema, but sometimes it's good enough, and I usually pick up the 3D version of a movie instead of the regular one, if available.

But just as in the cinema, you need to settle down to watch the movie in order to get "sucked in" by the 3D. Same as in the cinema, were you generally won't "scan email, skim through a magazine, or keep watching out the corner of my eye from another room.". If you let yourself be distracted every minute, 3D is going to suck, whether you're in your home theater or a proper one.

By the way, I too am curious about no-glasses 3D but I'm not holding my breath. LG is already selling sets with passive 3D glasses, but the viewing experience is decidedly poorer than with good shutter glasses.

It's because of the way cinemas project the movie. I'm not sure about the exact setup they generally have, but they project the left and right frames on top of each other using opposing circular polarisation. This works well with passive glasses and is very easy to achieve with a special projector. On a TV where you don't project anything but stare at the pixels themselves, managing varying polarisation is a bit harder. LG somehow found a way to get 3D on a TV panel with passive glasses; you do get proper 3D but the quality suffers visibly.

By the way, any 3D will work a lot better with less ambient light, be it a cinema, shutter glasses at home, or a TV with passive glasses

The current passive 3d tvs use half the vertical resolution. If you are close enough, that shows. If you use the motion enhancing features, that shows too. Shutter glasses aren't perfect either. Even though my TV is a 3D one (for the very small price difference between non-3d and 3d, I decided to get it), I'm not using it much. Perhaps with more usage you can forget about the artifact, but so far I'm not running after 3d movies.

I only know a couple people who enjoy 3D movies, out of a couple dozen I've talked to about it. My kids didn't even want to see 3D version of Transformers, their favorite entertainment subject. They said it "bothers their eyes after a while."

I experimented with a 50" 3D set on display and found that if I was any further away from it than about 6 feet the scale on screen was all wrong. Basically, for stereoscopic TV to work, you have to fill your field of view such that the images hitting your eyes are the right distance apart. Change that distance and the scale changes so people start to look like marionettes rather than real people. This is especially bad in a typical home setting where you wouldn't sit so close or so face on. I can see 3D for home cinema and I might consider replacing my current 100" HD front projector with a 3D rig but for regular TV use it doesn't work.

I've seen two movies in 3D (well, the same one twice)... both times it gave me a splitting headache that lasted for hours.

I don't like 3D. I don't want 3D. I'm not willing to pay for 3D. To me, 3D is a pointless failed technology I don't want.

Granted, everyone else is free to choose to have it, and I may actually be in the minority. But I'm not willing to spend a single penny on it. Not now, not ever.

I just view it as yet another reason why new TVs are a moving target. The HD spec has changed half a dozen times since about 99 when I bought my DVD player... HDMI, HDCP, and now 3D. Do they really think people are going to buy a fresh new TV for another moving target spec every 2-3 years?

Used to be that you could buy a TV and have it last a decade or more... now it's just baubles and doo-dads they try to change every year,

I finally just replaced my ten year old rear-projection TV with an LCD TV... and I have no intention of replacing this for at least another 5+ years. As always, 3D is a gimmick that will attract some people, but the rest will simply watch it pass by and fade away.

1080p is, essentially very similar to 1080i--except that the reverse telecine is done for you.The advantage of bluray is that it has more bandwidth for video-- (and better codecs)-- so it doesn't start to pixilate every time there's a slight bit of action on screen.

When your PBS station decides to send 1 HD, and three SD streams over a single ATSC channel, the "Ken Burns" effect gets to be annoying.

The difference is visible and noticeable improvement. Anyone can quickly tell the difference between HDTV and NTSC. A lot of people don't even notice the difference between 720P and 1080P on the more common sizes of TV. Not everyone will buy the audiophile level of equipment, only people that are discerning enough to care about the difference will pay extra for it. The same holds true for blue-ray. The reason I bought a blue ray player was because it had a bundled netflix application, which seems to pl

NTSC was not good enough. It was interlaced, had poor resolution, and was the wrong aspect ratio. "Letterboxing" the content, of which I was a big fan at the time, (because seeing the entire frame was more important) admittedly reduced the (vertical) resolution even further. Some say part of the problem was also the analog nature of the signal (as opposed to HDTV being digital) and there is some truth to that, but I personally think the term "digital" is way overused. [1]

HDTV was non-interlaced [2], had resolution that was good enough (take note, we'll come back to that later) and was closer to the aspect ratio used in theaters. (In that 1.85:1 would have a tiny bit of zoom or letterboxing, and 2.39:1 would still be acceptable.)

Now, VHS was a horrible medium, that didn't even come close to the resolution of the better TVs of the time. (Can you imagine today watching content in 170 horizontal line resolution?) Laserdisc (of which I was a consumer) came closer. DVD represented a huge, easily visible increase in quality over VHS. (Moreover, a well-crafted DVD on a good player was visibly better than even the best Criterion laserdisc on a good player, without all the disadvantages of laserdisc.)

So if you go strictly nerd-like by the numbers only, the resolution of vhs (170 lines) is about the same fraction of NTSC (525 lines) as DVD (480P) is of HDTV (1080P). So DVD must be just horrible on HDTVs, right? In real life it's not that simple, for a few reasons:

(1) As we do not change out our eyeballs with every upgrade, at some point, the video quality is good enough. The difference between VHS and a well crafted 480P DVD is striking. Even your grandparents notice it. But the difference between 480P and Blu-ray? Shrug. The difference in detail can be noticeable, but it's just not striking. For most people, 480P is good enough. 720P is an embarrassment of riches. 1080P is overkill. [3] (Note I didn't include any interlaced modes. I hope interlace goes away and never ever comes back.)

(2) The reason I keep saying "well crafted" is that it's an important issue in and of itself. I was an early adopter of Blu-ray as a backup medium, but since I had one in my media center I could also use it to play Blu-ray discs on the TV (Sony 48 inch Bravia). What I found was that there is a considerable overlap between the best DVDs and the worst Blu-rays. As one would expect, as it takes more than a medium to craft a brilliant video. Buying a title on Blu-ray is not, in and of itself, a guarantee that you're getting better video quality.

(3) Screen size is important. In less than 50 inches, the difference between DVD and Blu-ray is insignificant. Up to 60 inches it becomes noticeable, and at 100 inches or larger (projection) Blu-ray is required, as DVD just doesn't hack it at that screen size. Now, it used to be that the bigger screen you had the better, right? People were putting 60 inch sets in rooms way too small, and forcing themselves to sit way too close to get a good viewing experience, but hey, it's BIG. And big is BETTER. However, I've read lately that there is some reversal in this trend, and now 32 inches is considered a good size because it's GREEN. And green is BETTER. Shrug. The point is, unless you have a viewing room big enough and a screen big enough and every single component in the video stream is good enough, you're wasting your money. Sorry, it's true. We can make ourselves believe we're having a better experience, but really we're not, except in our imaginations.

And so, for most people in most situations with most equipment, Blu-ray just doesn't buy you enough to warrant paying more. Once it's dead even and Blu-ray players are $39 and there's a huge pile of discs in the cut-out bin (and by that I don't mean "Ernest saves Christmas") I might consider it when the current DVD player fails and can't be fixed. But it's ju

I was one of the first purchasers and the only issue I find with it is the fact that they aren't releasing enough and what they are releasing is sometimes as much as twice the price of the regular blu-ray if you don't pick it with the release day sales.

Are there some downsides? Yes, you have to wear the glasses, not a big deal to me or my wife or my kid, two of us already wear glasses 24/7 anyhow. Millions of people do everyday, and for some reason it's some massive inconvenience. I'll bet everyone who wh

Lack of good content is the real problem. I'm an absolutely 3d fanatic, and even I admit there just isn't anything out there. A few cartoons, 1 heavy cg movie about blue people, and a bunch of schlock that looks like garbage because the 3d was faked in.

It's just like HD content that was upscaled from SD content... It's not actually any better.

Give me comfortable glasses that can overlay reality. Then I can use those glasses for all my general purpose viewing needs, be they 2D or 3D.

It's more than credible that you can turn off the lights in your bedroom or TV room and have the equivalent resolution experience of a movie theater, be it 2D or 3D.

They just need a short range transmitter with enough bandwidth that can match the resolution of both eyes for up to ten people in a room. Have an aux input that can plug into an external receiver for a specialized receiver for occasions where your in a larger crowd such as a theater. Everyone they can have the quality glasses they can afford. It opens up a world of augmented reality. Just like cell phones they will be big at first and then they will get smaller and more fashionable.

Then much further in the future we will have implants that plug directly into the optical nerve and augment what you see more directly.

I think the problem is that 3D movies and TV are not really "3D", they are 2D movies using a stereoscopic effect that can fool the brain into thinking that the picture has depth. But it's not really 3D, which results in headaches and other effects that make it uncomfortable for many people.

If they could come out with a holoscopic projection mechanism that shows true 3D, maybe then people will be more interested, but high quality full-color holoscopic projection is probably decades away, if ever.

Even in a galaxy far, far away, the holographic projections created by R2-series droids have flickering low-quality images.

I honestly can't tell you if my current TV even has picture-in-picture, because AFAIK, I've never once actually used it on any TV I've owned. But I can remember when it was touted as this "must have" feature by the industry. So it got added to the new TV's. The general public was at first kind of interested. Then after the hype died down and users actually got to try it out a few times and realize that it wasn't really all that useful, it quickly became a "Who gives a shit?" feature.

Oh, it was useful if you liked sports - but things got complicated when we moved to satellite TV and digital cable. You needed two tuners to get all your channels, and that just started getting silly.

If your point is that 3D is a niche product and many people won't want it, then I agree. Colour TV is something everybody wants; HD television is something almost everybody will want once they see the improvement in picture quality; 3D just isn't that much more interesting.

Even if it worked perfectly, no headaches, glasses, extra cost, etc. I still wouldn't want it. Not on the big screen either. It doesn't offer anything to me, and that "whoa, dude!" feeling you get when they chuck crap at the camera just fails to impress...

I find it surprising that all the comments above are focused on 3D movies, and none mention gaming. Hello people? Gaming in 3D is freaking amazing. It really adds to the immersion, and looks pretty fantastic. That's the only reason to get a 3D-capable TV in my opinion. 3D movies suck even in theaters, and "converted" content is just plain wrong. Gaming in 3D, on the other hand... If you haven't tried it yet, you should.

Have you played games in 3D? I find they appear to be nothing more then flat planes at various depths moving over the surface of the TV with some shadows to give the impression of distance. If I am playing CoD I should be able to peer around a corner or over ground cover, but you can't. I will agree that 3D brings more novelty to gaming, but I find it as ineffective for games as it is for movies mostly because I would tend to play a game > 90 minutes and 3D TV gives me a headache after about 15 minutes.

Actually it sounds facetious since it is already a thing but the "next big thing" is user generated content, and that is 2D.

Already we geeks and some definitively non geeks have hooked our TVs to the net but that's still not a reality for the vast majority of people. Most people still watch regular TV, either via cable or air waves. Even Netflix is in many ways "Old Media".

But as HTPC become the norm more and more people will start watching user generated content predominantly. It is already the case that I can be entertained for weeks just by watching and reading stuff that's not only completely free but desperate to get any attention at all. And as technology improves, the quality of content will only improve. And the content that doesn't improve in production quality will improve in other ways. As wifi access becomes more ubiquos and SSD become cheaper more people will start making recording on the spot, Meaning that there won't be a public event small enough to not be filmed.

And on top of that there is the rise of public domain content. Yes there is a market for old movies, and old movies are getting newer each year, and it's not only old movies, public domain content includes government funded productions too, including educational and artistic stuff that doesn't sell well but is popular enough when free.

Big Media will always exist but their market-share can only shrink. I see the insistence on 3D as an attempt at making themselves seem irreplaceable. If they convince people that content must be 3D, then they are the only ones making content. But I don't see that happening.

Bonus point: Last year scientist made a humble first step into reconstructing images from the visual cortex activity (link) [gizmodo.com], a previously though impossible feat. If that technology only doubles each year we might be watching dream movies in less than a decade.

I thought the same, I bought my TV without really wanting 3D but it's pretty much standard now so it came with it anyway, I'd not really tried it much, I tried the BBC Wimbledon 3D test, I tried Street Dance 3D when it was on the other day but none of it was anything special.

Then I noticed Assassins Creed on the 360 supports it, and thought I'd give it a go. It really is pretty fucking good, I know a few other games like Crysis and Gears 3 support it but I've not tried them yet.

At the end of the day I guess it's just like at the cinema, Avatar was phenomenal in 3D but little else has been, likewise, it appears games are suited to 3D too.

I'll assume it's the difference between something genuinely built in 3D, and that shitty cardboard cut out version of 3D.

Still, it's early days, and Toshiba is already testing glasses-less 3D TVs so I think it'll only get better. All in all, I don't think it's a bad technology, in some cases it certainly adds something, when you're stood at the top of a massive tower in Assassins Creed looking down, you can really feel the height.

At the end of the day I guess it's just like at the cinema, Avatar was phenomenal in 3D but little else has been, likewise, it appears games are suited to 3D too.

Pop quiz, hotshot:1. Who was Luke's mentor in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi?2. Who was the character in The Lord of the Rings that chased "his precious"?3. Name the blue girl in Avatar.

3D doesn't make for good, memorable characters. It makes for gimmicky crap. Avatar was a terrible movie with a 3D effect, 2D characters, and a 1D plot.

Oh, BTW, since I personally cannot name characters in just about any movie, does that mean they are all gimmicky crap? Or just that I've watched Empire Strikes Back many times since it came out, including when I was an impressionable kid, and read the LOTR in book form decades before the movie, versus watching Avatar a total of once?

GP could have least done the source blog the courtesy of a link [theoatmeal.com] (maybe NSFW). The point being made there is a rebuttal to the claim that 3D "makes the characters and environments more believable".

Oh, BTW, since I personally cannot name characters in just about any movie, does that mean they are all gimmicky crap? Or just that I've watched Empire Strikes Back many times since it came out, including when I was an impressionable kid, and read the LOTR in book form decades before the movie, versus watching Avatar a total of once?

Interesting. Perhaps part of the reason you've watched Empire Strikes Back so many times is that you enjoyed the story? I mean, I don't think we're breaking new ground here if we say that special effects (e.g. explosions, 3D, explosions in 3D) don't make up for flat characters or a weak story.

HDTV adoption was driven by movies and sports, and not so much by sitcoms. 3D adoption could be the same. I know ESPN does a few sporting events in 3D. If DirectTV started showing all of their sports packages in 3D, it might push the TV adoption considerably.

Seeing Avatar in theaters is the only time when 3D enhanced my experience rather than detracting from it like all the other movies over the past few years that used 3D as a last second gimmick.

"How To Train Your Dragon" also made worthwhile use of 3D, especially for the flying scenes. However the fact that we're arguing over whether there were two movies that were worth the extra price or just one doesn't change the gist of what you're saying.

Half the glass out there has strange effects through polarized lenses. Automotive glass (especially small car rear windows for some reason) looks like a dot-grid, the windows outside my workplace turn into rainbows, and even the sunlight reflecting off of the road gets brighter or dimmer depending on how I tilt my head with my sunglasses on.

If you find yourself in situations where you end up at 3D movies despite your wishes, get a pair of the $8 "2D glasses" from Amazon (or wherever). It's just a left-eye lens on both eyes, so you'll see the same 2D frame with both eyes at the same time. That should fix it for you.

Of course, the easiest thing is to just not go see 3D movies, but even on slashdot, people sometimes have friends they like to hang out with, and it's not always possible for a group of friends to agree on something that's perfect